So Give Me Hope
by Luna Darkside
Summary: The problem with being in love with Kaito, Shinichi thinks bitterly, is that Kaito flirts with literally everyone. (In which Shinichi pines and misunderstands and Kaito is confused and longsuffering.) /ShinKai & KaiShin, oneshot, complete/


_If you're in the mood for rambly, sappy, terrible fluff, you've come to the right place, as that is all you'll find in this fic._

 _Warnings include shounen-ai (what else is new), grammar mistakes / possible errors, Shinichi being dense and jealous, Kaito being longsuffering and mildly posessive, etc. You know, the usual sorts of uncharacteristic characterizations that can be found in my fic. Title is from "Give Me Hope" by New Politics for no reason other than the fact that I like it._

 _Hope you enjoy! - Luna_

 **So Give Me Hope**

A few things about Shinichi:

He liked Sherlock Holmes in any and every incarnation, but he still loved the original stories most. He didn't have a favorite color, despite that he'd told Ran it was red once (he tended to wear blue and white most often, though). He usually drank coffee (black, one sugar), but he did like matcha green tea and the occasional cup of jasmine. He had lived in Tokyo for all of his life. He had solved over eight hundred cases in his career as a detective. And he was in love with Kuroba Kaito.

No, really.

At some point in his life, probably around the fifth time Kaito smiled at him as if Shinichi had hung the stars in the sky and unlocked every secret of the universe, Shinichi being desperately, desperately enamored of Kaito had become an incontestable fact, just another undeniable statement. The sky was blue, gravity existed, and Shinichi was in love with Kaito. Fact.

Another indisputable fact was that Kaito was the most irritating flirt in the history of humankind. No one knew that better than Shinichi. He'd witnessed Kaito smiling beatifically at waitresses and shamelessly complimenting baristas and charming free popcorn out of movie theater ushers on too many occasions _not_ to know that.

So honestly, Shinichi shouldn't have been surprised when he breezed through the front doors of the Courte Hotel mid-heist, ignoring the throngs of screaming, sign-toting people behind him, and was informed that Kaitou Kid had secluded himself in the penthouse suite with Princess Laurelle D'Angelique, the crown princess of some tiny European country and the owner of the heist's target gem. All attempts to break into the suite had been unsuccessful, or at least that was what the Kid task force member who intercepted Shinichi in the lobby told him.

"There were some thumping noises, if you know what I mean. Like the headboard hitting the wall or something," the man added unhelpfully. He wiggled his eyebrows. Shinichi glared and spitefully deduced that the man's wife was considering cheating on him with the mailman, in a selfish attempt to make himself feel better. It didn't work.

"Thanks," he grumbled at the man and stalked off to sit outside the gilded door to the penthouse suite.

It wasn't, Shinichi reminded himself, that he had any claim to Kaito in the first place, really. He was Kaito's as much as the heist gems Kaito stole were (which was to say Not At All). But when Kaito was so damn flirty with everything that moved… well, it made sense that Shinichi would get this worked up over it, considering how he felt about Kaito. Nobody liked to know that the person they sort of wanted to marry flirted with anything that had a pulse. Especially not with princesses of tiny diamond-rich European countries, Shinichi added petulantly.

He sat seething outside the penthouse for another hour, alternating between snapping at the task force managers, feeling terrible about it, moping, and playing Tetris on his phone. Nothing was working, though – he couldn't stop wondering what Kaito was doing with that princess. There was absolutely _no_ need for Kaito to lock himself in a room with her _just_ to steal a diamond, and even if there was, it wouldn't take _two hours_ alone together to get the job done.

Shinichi continued to seethe until there was a loud, resounding bang from inside the room. Instantly on guard, he tucked his phone into his back pocket and approached the door cautiously, several task force members following his lead. He didn't get closer than a meter before the doors exploded outward in an explosion of rose-scented pink smoke and bits of reflective confetti.

Groaning, Shinichi batted at the air until it cleared enough for him to stalk forward into the room. He surveyed the lavish, nicely decorated room with a mixture of annoyance and despair before stopping to glare at the equally lavish and nicely decorated blonde girl sitting on the bed. She giggled when she met his eyes, fair skin suffused with a flush. Shinichi tried not to think about _how_ or _why_ she was flushed. That was definitely not something he needed to know for certain.

"Are you the princess?" he asked with probably not as much respect as a member of a royal family warranted, but he couldn't help but notice well she filled out her fluffy pink dress and how long and curly her mascaraed eyelashes were. He couldn't imagine Kaito turning _her_ down.

"Yes, I am," the princess smiled at him, tossing a perfectly symmetrical blonde ringlet over one shoulder. Shinichi idly wondered how long it took her stylist(s) to do her hair. He was thinking at least four hours. "And you must be Shinichi-kun, right?"

Taken aback, Shinichi blinked at her with growing unease. How could she have – He cut himself off. Obviously Kaito had told her something, the little shit. Probably something terribly unflattering, too, like how Shinichi trailed after him like a puppy without a home. "Uh… yes."

"Oh, I see." The princess giggled, lifting one dainty hand to cover her shiny pink lips. "Well, in that case, Kid just left through that window." She gestured towards the floor-to-ceiling glass doors leading to the balcony, which, upon further inspection, appeared to be gaping open, offering a breathtaking view of the navy blue night sky.

"Thank you," Shinichi mumbled. He felt her eyes following him as he crossed the room, feet sinking in the plush wine red carpet.

Predictably, Kaito was long gone, the balcony bare of everything but a plain card that read _Almost got me, Shinichi! xxxxxxxx Kaito (call me when you get home!)_ written in Kaito's messy, curlicued scrawl. Shinichi picked it up, sighed – typical Kaito behavior, leaving no less than _eight_ kiss marks – and tucked it into his back pocket just as Nakamori barged into the room, demanding an explanation.

The next four hours were spent interrogating the princess, who somehow deemed it appropriate to send Shinichi suggestive winks and onceovers through the entire procedure. Shinichi generally ignored her, instead choosing how he was going to sulk when he got home (he was thinking tea and _The Sign of Four_ , possibly with a candle or two if he managed to get himself even more depressed by thinking of Kaito and his stupid flirting on the way home).

That plan didn't end up working out, because when Shinichi had finally gotten home (after he _had_ managed to brood about Kaito on the train ride home, which mean he would need to find wherever Ran had hidden the lavender candles), Kaito was perched on his bedroom windowsill like an oversized bird. He was missing most of his Kid uniform and his hair was a mess and he was almost dripping sweat, but he was also flushed and breathless and gorgeous, so Shinichi was a little conflicted.

"You didn't call me when you got home, Shinichi. I was so _worried_. What if you'd been attacked by a velociraptor on your way home?" Kaito drawled when Shinichi stopped in the doorway to halfheartedly glare at him, as if he hadn't just spent an evening doing questionable activities with some random princess. He pushed a handful of his disheveled hair out of his face and grinned impishly, moonlight throwing his features into sharp, handsome relief. Shinichi hated him (as much as someone who loved him could).

"First of all, velociraptors are extinct, and second of all, don't you have better things to do than creep on me?" Shinichi asked once he had finished rubbing his temples and asking whatever deities might've been listening why he had ever fallen for such an annoying person. "Like, I don't know, hang out with royalty or whatever?" He couldn't keep a hint of bitterness from his tone. "Lock yourself in a room with a crown princess for over two hours?"

"Oh, don't be like that," Kaito sighed theatrically before dropping into the room, feet barely making a sound against the carpet. He spread his arms, lifting his eyebrows at Shinichi when Shinichi didn't immediately rush to embrace him or whatever he expected/was used to. "Shinichi, you know you're the only one for me."

Great, Kaito's flirting. _Just_ what Shinichi needed. He wondered, self-destructively, if Kaito had used that line on the princess, too.

"I bet you tell all the pretty detectives that," he remarked a little sharply, angling away to flip the lights on instead of looking at Kaito's stupid smirky smile. _You're not special_ , he reminded himself pointedly. _He smiles like that with everyone. You've seen it_. (Although Shinichi couldn't exactly remember the last time he had, but.)

When he turned back, Kaito was frowning a little. In the glow of the fluorescent lights, he looked more lost than wild and adventuring as he tugged at the hem of his dress shirt and swiped a droplet of sweat off his forehead. "Are you – did I do something?" he asked.

Faced with the soul-crushing power of Kaito's puppy eyes, Shinichi didn't stand a chance. Blowing out a breath, he shook his head. "Nothing out of the ordinary. I'm just getting worked up over nothing." Because it really _was_ nothing. Kaito's flirting was nothing new. Shinichi was the one in the wrong, lashing out for no reason as he had.

"Shinichi?" Kaito asked, hesitant as he reached out with one hand, and Shinichi shook his head, dislodging the thoughts.

"Why don't you take a shower, and then we can watch a movie? I'll let you pick," he offered, taking a step backwards.

For a moment, something flashed across Kaito's face – it sort of resembled the look Kaito got whenever someone mentioned his father, with the way it wasn't quite angry but not entirely sad, either – but it was gone so quickly, replaced nearly instantaneously with Kaito's usual miles-wide smile, that Shinichi decided he'd imagined it. "Is that your way of trying to cuddle with me, Shi-ni-chi?" He clipped Shinichi's name on the vowels and slurred the consonants sloppily, somehow making it sound far dirtier that Shinichi previously had thought possible, and Shinichi fought back a flush, schooling his expression.

"What's that, you want me to order sashimi? Well, it's a bit late, but if you insist…" He closed his door on Kaito's squawk of horror, dropping his forehead against the doorframe to take a moment just to breathe and collect himself.

* * *

So for a while after that, Shinichi's (admittedly irrational) jealousy wasn't really a problem. As usual, he spent too much time with Kaito, dragging him out to crime scenes and to buy the latest Detective Samonji novel and accompanying him to obscure magic conventions and to see the latest action/adventure movie in theaters. Basically, they were "sickeningly cute and joined at the hip," as Ran liked to call them.

("We're _not_ joined at the hip," Shinichi used to exasperatedly complain every time she said it, but Ran started replying with, "Then where do you want to be joined with him?" with some lewd eyebrow waggling and yeah, Shinichi learned not to respond to her whenever she said things like that. He didn't know when she'd lost her innocence and developed a knack for innuendos, but he missed the days when she used to blush at "kiss.")

Things came to a head, however, at Hakuba's twenty-second birthday party.

Someone (read: Hattori, who still claimed to hate Hakuba even though they'd been grudging friends for almost six years now) suggested some pretentiously named bar in Ekoda, and, despite making snide comments about Hattori's questionable taste, Hakuba agreed to have his party there. Which wasn't a _bad_ thing; for all that Shinichi agreed that Hattori had mildly dubious taste when it came to a lot of things, the bar was fine – classy, even. It even had those annoying minimalist paintings on the walls, which Shinichi figured had to be a hallmark of a refined establishment.

No, the bar wasn't the problem. The girl was.

She was pretty, Shinichi could admit. Probably even beautiful. She had perfectly straight hair two shades lighter than chestnut brown and unremarkable brown eyes made remarkable by her skillfully applied makeup, and she was wearing the sort of deceptively simple outfit that looked plain but probably cost as much as several yachts and possibly a private jet or two. She carried herself with confidence and a smile and a lot of floral perfume. Overall, probably one of the prettiest girls Shinichi had met in a long time, which was saying a lot.

Kaito was in the middle of telling Shinichi a story about the last time he'd seen Hakuba get drunk, cheerily ignoring how a red-faced Hattori was doing a dangerously long line of shots on the far side of the bar, when the girl sidled up and sat down in the chair beside Shinichi's.

"Hey there. I'm Miho," she beamed, somehow managing to stick her hip out while sitting down, and Shinichi smiled hesitantly at her.

"I'm Shinichi," he replied, trying not to look at Kaito. He extended one hand, prepared to give her a short handshake and then politely turn away, but Miho latched onto his hand with both of hers. She was wearing a lot of rings, Shinichi noted, and her nails were painted deep, deep red, the color of sundried tomatoes.

Behind him, Kaito cleared his throat, and Shinichi jerked his hand out of Miho's grip, chancing a glance over his shoulder at him. Kaito looked – well, not quite put out, but definitely getting there.

"Sorry," Miho giggled, but she didn't sound apologetic in the slightest. Her eyes flicked up and down Kaito momentarily (Shinichi felt a stab of annoyance – couldn't she be at least a _little_ subtle about checking him out?) before she returned her gaze to Shinichi, leaning forward a bit. "So what are you up to tonight, Shinichi-kun?"

Opening his mouth to give her a vague, "We're here for a friend's birthday," Shinichi was surprised when Kaito shouldered forward, a little roughly, to interrupt Miho's line of sight.

"Just hanging out. I'm Kaito, by the way," he grinned, a little manic and a lot charming, and Shinichi's heart sank down paste his toes. Oh. So Kaito was going to flirt with her. Okay. Fine. He could deal with that. It wasn't as if he hadn't witnessed this, like, hundreds of times before.

Shinichi was so busy sighing internally that he almost missed the way Kaito's hand suddenly curled hard around his wrist, fingers warm and soft but far too tight for comfort. Frowning, Shinichi glanced up at Miho, who was lifting her artfully penciled eyebrows, then Kaito, who refused to look at Shinichi. Was that Kaito's way of warning Shinichi to back off, as if Shinichi had any sort of interest in Miho? He clenched his jaw with irritation.

Miho, on the other hand, rolled her neatly lined eyes. Shinichi was admittedly impressed at how sharp she'd managed to get the little wingy parts of her eyeliner. "Nice to meet you, Kaito-kun." She leaned out, smiling over Kaito's shoulder at Shinichi. "So, Shinichi –"

"What are you doing alone in a place like this?" Kaito broke in, angling himself so he blocked Shinichi completely. From what Shinichi could see (which wasn't much), Kaito's smile was oddly sharp, too intense for trying to hit on someone. Shinichi was baffled. "Rare for a pretty thing like you."

"I was on my way to not being alone, actually," Miho replied, and was that a hint of snappishness in her tone? Shinichi tried to duck around Kaito to get a better look at her face, but before he could, Kaito was pulling him away by the arm, through the front doors of the bar and into the icy night air.

"Let's go home," Kaito mumbled, one hand still clasping Shinichi's forearm, and Shinichi stood in the middle of the sidewalk, utterly bewildered, before he smacked Kaito on the bicep hard enough that Kaito grunted and let him go.

"What the hell just happened?" Shinichi demanded as Kaito rubbed his shoulder and made wounded sounds. "Why are you so worked up over some random girl?"

Kaito looked at him askance, hand still pressed to his upper arm. "Isn't that obvious?"

"No," Shinichi snapped, irate with the whole situation. Kaito was _not_ allowed to get bent out of shape just because he'd wanted to flirt with some girl in a bar. _Shinichi_ was the one who had to put up with the flirting. He crossed his arms over his chest. "It's _not_ obvious, and if you don't explain what just happened back there, I'm going back in and asking Miho or whatever her name is."

That made Kaito's eyes flash. "Don't," he said lowly, and it sounded like a strange combination of pleading and serious. "Shinichi. Don't."

Oh, _okay_. That was how he was going to be, then? "You'd better explain, then," Shinichi hissed.

Shaking his head, Kaito ran a hand through his hair until it stuck up in clumps. "Shinichi," he said, and there was definitely an imploring edge to his voice now. "It's – it's really nothing. It's not important. Please, can we just leave?"

And somehow, even though Shinichi had been ready to go on a rampage and knock down telephone poles and generally be destructive, the beseeching lilt to Kaito's tone was enough to make him bite back a sigh and rub at the bridge of his nose, exasperation bleeding out of him until he just felt tired.

"Fine," he grunted, whirling to stalk off towards the train station. "Fine, but I'm going to find out eventually."

Shinichi was halfway down the sidewalk when he heard, "I hope you do," from behind him. He steadfastly convinced himself he was hearing things, because what could that possibly mean?

* * *

It was sort of funny how well Ran knew Shinichi.

No, really. Ran figured out the whole Kaito situation approximately two years before he did, and her only response to Shinichi's frantic "Oh my God I'm in love with Kaito what do I do _what do I do_ " was "About time. May or June wedding?" She also had the uncanny ability to know whenever something was wrong – for instance, the time that he got into an argument with Kaito about soup bases (don't ask, but it was a very tumultuous time, and to this day, neither of them brings up broth).

Now was no different. Ran took one look at him and immediately demanded, "What happened with Kuroba-kun _this_ time?" and Shinichi was helpless to fend her off.

"I just don't get it," Shinichi mumbled, rubbing this thumb of the rim of his coffee cup. They'd relocated to Poirot sometime during Shinichi's ten-minute rant about Kaito's flirtatiousness. Azusa kept casting concerned glances at them, but Shinichi couldn't bring himself to care. "He's always so – _ugh_. With, like, everyone, including me. And it probably shouldn't annoy me so much, since I've known from the start that he's a flirt, but it's just… I don't know. I hate it."

Across the table, Ran prodded at her temples. "Oh my God," she muttered under her breath before she met Shinichi's eyes. "Shinichi, Kuroba-kun has _never_ flirted with me."

"What?" Blinking, Shinichi stared at her. Even he could tell that Ran was gorgeous, and she was practically his sister. "But…"

"Exactly." Ran lifted her eyebrows pointedly. "If Kuroba-kun flirts as much as you say he does, then why doesn't he flirt with me or Aoko or Hakuba or Hattori?"

"Because you're all friends and it would be weird?" Shinichi tried hopefully, and Ran leveled him with a flat _are you shitting me_ look.

"Oh, and you and Kuroba-kun _aren't_ friends?"

"Okay, but," Shinichi began, and found he couldn't go on. He coughed awkwardly, staring at the poster advertising a lunch special posted on the wall behind Ran. "Oh, look. You can get curry rice _and_ miso soup for just eight hundred yen."

Ran looked spectacularly unimpressed.

"Eight hundred yen," Shinichi tried, futilely.

" _Anyway_ ," Ran continued, acting as if he hadn't said anything, "from what you've told me, that situation at the bar wasn't because of him wanting to flirt with her. It was him being jealous." She lifted her eyebrows expectantly, clearly waiting for him to come to some obvious conclusion.

But Shinichi just scowled, confused and a little hurt. "Of who?" Of Shinichi himself, because Miho had originally approached him? Because Kaito hadn't caught her eye at first? The thought made him slightly ill. She _had_ been pretty, but _still_ –

Openmouthed, Ran stared at him for a long, long moment before she groaned and dropped her head against the table with a loud clunk that signified the death of several hundred brain cells.

Shinichi watched on with mild concern. "Are you having an aneurysm?"

"You are so dense," she said when she lifted her head again, forehead red from where she'd hit it. Shinichi blinked, confused, but Ran wouldn't elaborate, and the conversation soon turned to more mundane topics, like how Ran was planning on winning her next karate tournament (she was several tournaments from becoming Japan's highest ranked champion) and Shinichi's latest case (a mass poisoning of a circus troupe).

* * *

Despite his talk with Ran, Shinichi wasn't expecting to bare his heart to Kaito out of nowhere.

It went like this. They were at Shinichi's kitchen table on a Saturday afternoon – not unusual at all. Shinichi was in the middle of working through a cold case that Takagi had asked him to take a look at and Kaito was idly practicing a magic trick that involved some kind of flammable material (or at least Shinichi assumed as much from the perpetual burnt smell suffusing the room) when Kaito commented brightly, "You're getting pretty far in that case, aren't you? Beauty _and_ brains – aren't you just _perfect_ ," and Shinichi sort of – snapped.

He honestly didn't mean to sound so vehement, though. Even as he half-yelled, " _Will you stop with the flirting if you don't mean anything by it_ ," he was aware of just how insane he sounded.

Kaito was staring wide-eyed at him, hands suspended in midair. A crackling ring of blue fire, spiraled lazily around his index finger, fizzled out abruptly. "What?" he croaked, taken aback.

Sucking in a deep breath, Shinichi threw down his pen and stood up to start pacing. Anything to avoid looking directly at Kaito's face. "Look, I know it's your personality and that's just the way you are, but you flirting with everything that moves is getting sort of annoying."

"Wait," Kaito said. He sounded a little choked. "Wait, what?"

"That time with the princess," Shinichi steamrolled on, helplessly spreading his arms, "and the time at the bar, where you just – you flirt with _everyone_ , and I know that's why you flirt with me, too, but it's sort of hard to deal with, so. Just. Could you stop doing that maybe?" He cleared his throat. Kaito was looking at him unblinkingly, eyes distractingly wide. Shinichi (a bit dreamily) noticed just how long and dark his eyelashes were and then had to remind his brain that he was angry at Kaito, dammit, and it wasn't the time to count Kaito's eyelashes like some kind of obsessed stalker.

"I don't… what?" Kaito shook his head, as if to shake away Shinichi's words. "I don't flirt with everyone. I literally only flirt with you."

"Oh, s _ure_ ," Shinichi responded bitterly, running his hands through his hair as he leaned against the kitchen door and avoided Kaito's gaze. He felt very tired, all of a sudden. "Sure, you didn't lock yourself in a room with a princess for two hours. Sure, you didn't shove me out of the way to hit on a girl at a bar." He shook his head at Kaito. "Not buying it."

"No, really, you've got it wrong." Kaito hurried to get to his feet, his chair scraping against the floor as he did. The sound was strangely loud and grating, setting Shinichi's teeth on edge. "No, that thing with the princess –" He flushed a little, strangely enough. Shinichi was reluctantly drawn in by the way color filled his cheeks. "That wasn't me – flirting with her, or anything. I broke into her room to steal the jewel, but she – well, she was really nice."

"Nice." Shinichi was surprised at how uninflected he made the word sound. "Oh."

"Not like that," Kaito insisted, strangely fierce as he skirted around the table to round on Shinichi. "We got to talking, and I…" He coughed, swiping a hand over his mouth. It was a nervous tic of his that Shinichi had noticed and catalogued years ago. "I brought up this – this guy that I've been in love with for, like, four years, and, well. It was nice to talk to someone about it."

"A guy," Shinichi muttered hollowly. Oh, great, so Kaito _did_ like someone, though Shinichi didn't know how he had time to meet other people when he spent so much time with Shinichi –

"A guy who's a detective and likes Sherlock Holmes and takes his coffee black with one sugar," Kaito added, and his eyes were burning when they locked with Shinichi's. "A guy whose name is Kudou Shinichi."

All the air abruptly vacated Shinichi's lungs, because oh.

 _Oh._

He felt as if he was listening from underwater, slowly drowning in his own surprise, as Kaito went on, talking faster and faster. Another nervous tic of his, actually. "And that time at the bar, I wasn't – it wasn't because I wanted to flirt with _her_ , really, it was just… She was looking at you like she wanted to – I don't know, she was just looking at you in a bad way, and I didn't _want_ her to, so I just… I…" He blew out a breath. "So yeah. I don't know why you thought I was, uh, flirty with everyone, but it's just you." The look he sent Shinichi was somehow both hopeful and desperate. "It's always been just you."

And really, what was Shinichi supposed to do in response to that, other than close the distance between them until he had Kaito backed up against the oven and Kaito's lips against his?

Kissing Kaito was ridiculously good, Shinichi discovered, not that he'd expected it to be anything less. Kaito's mouth was pleasantly warm, with a bit of give to it that Shinichi relentlessly took advantage of, and Kaito's hips were the perfect shape to mold his palms against, dig his fingertips into. The little sounds he made, too – those were incredible, somehow amplified when Shinichi tasted them directly on his own tongue.

They parted eventually, when Shinichi's lungs reminded him that oxygen was a necessary part of living. Shinichi didn't go far, though, resting his forehead against Kaito's as they caught their breaths.

"You're not allowed to flirt with anyone except me," Shinichi mumbled nonsensically. He winced at the possessiveness of the statement – _wow, way to scare him off_ – but Kaito just rolled his eyes, unbearably fond, and surged forward to mutter, "I never _did_ , you idiot," straight into Shinichi's mouth.

Well. Shinichi could live with that.

* * *

 **I feel like I should just change my name to "Sap Is All I Write" or something. It would be more accurate, at least.**

 **In other news, real life is starting to get a bit hectic, so if updates start getting slower, that would be the reason why. Yeah. Apologies in advance.**

 **Anyway, hope you enjoyed this even a little (if you did, please consider dropping me a review!) and I'll (maybe?) see you all soon! - Luna**


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